I'm the laziest of gardeners under the best of conditions and this summer has not been the best of conditions. Not for me, anyway. It's been really hot for a really long time and only since Monday has the humidity lowered enough so you don't need a snorkel outside. Plus I'm a big fat girl and I do not handle heat well at all.

This means that my yard is over-grown and full of weeds. Even though I put down landscape cloth on the front bed AND in between the rows in the veggie beds, they are still weed-ful. And the bed under the window, which does not have landscape cloth-- only mulch-- is a disaster. I have been trying to pull up the bigger invaders from my veggie beds but I am not such a hardy warrior and am losing the battle.

As are my poor plants and flowers. Between the heat and having to share their beds with unwanted partners, they are all doing poorly. Except for the marigolds. We've taken to watering 3 times a week whether it rains or not but the wilt is permenantly on for everything. I don't even remember what I put in the front bed besides the petunias, it's been so long since I've seen a flower. And the veggies are very slow growing and producing. I've gotten a few tomatoes from 3 plants. A few of the peppers flowered last week and I think I'm seeing 2 or 3 baby peppers. That's it.

Under the bay window.

You can't see it much at all but of all the potted plants, the lavender is fairing the best. The petunias did their best but they couldn't hold back the. . . whatever those green things are.

Front bed

The white ones and the really tall ones I started from seed. Marigolds, take a licking and keep on ticking. The green stuff beside the marigolds? Came right up through the cloth AND three inches of mulch.

Pepper and lettuce bed

Peppers, lettuce, volunteer tomatoes and weed bed is more accurate. I planted lettuce in one row of where the garlic used to be. But it was a hunnert and humid that day and I could not bring myself to all 4 rows. So there is a row of lettuce and 3 rows of weeds. They too sprouted up through the cloth and mulch. The peppers are accompanied by two volunteer maters.

Over there against the house and not in the bed are my potted herbs. The cilantro flowered, went to seed and died in about two weeks. Everything else is doing pretty good surrounded as they are with weeds and about 3 or 4 volunteer tomatoes.

Whew, your garden looks FABULOUS in comparison to mine. WHY we ever make a huge vegetable garden is beyond me, as right now it looks like a jungle. (It's going to stay that way because damned if I'm going to be able to get rid of all the weeds alone. And I'm pissed at myself for letting it get that way.) Next year it's going to be square foot gardening.